Alright, I finished my first RE site. I can't do much with the graphics because the client was pretty hands-on with that, but I'd like to get some feedback on the technical aspects like ease-of-use, etc.

I have a few more agents interested in sites, so your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

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Coming Soon:Orlyrealty.com
Already there: puffergroup.com

Greetings Billy!

I assume you're speaking about the orlyrealty.com in your signature?

To be totally honest, this is the first site to make me smile -- seriously. I don't think I've ever seen someone use bright and cheerful colors before. Ok, here are some changes I would make imo.

1. The images of Mrs. Chen looks like it got cut off on the left side?
2. I would use text instead of an image for her contact information and areas of interest (in the header).
3. Since you are using WordPress, I believe it's in their Terms of Use that you display "Powered by WordPress." I don't want you to get in trouble, so I'm just letting you know. I would look it up before you leave that off.
4. This is just personal preference, but I would use Arial or Verdana instead of the Georgia text.
5. When you click on "Search the MLS", it takes you to a page that is framed. I would decrease the height of the top frame to fit perfectly with the header.
6. Lastly, I would go in to the WordPress options and change the URL display to use text instead of "?page_id=7" or any page id's.

Hopefully this is the website you were talking about or I'll feel completely embarrassed doing a review on a website that wasn't to be reviewed -- lol.

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Troy Steuwer
Office Manager / Webmaster

Panama City Beach Real Estate | Panama City Beach Condos For Sale | Panama City Beach Homes For Sale

Oops forgot to add the url...it's for orlyrealty.com

Really helpful feedback, I'm going to look into those changes

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Coming Soon:Orlyrealty.com
Already there: puffergroup.com

Billy,

I would highly recommend setting up 301 permanent redirects from the old urls to the new. Currently many pages that are cached in Google are returning 404's.

Examples: orlyrealty.com/bergen_county_homes.asp and orlyrealty.com/sell.asp

All of the old pages at - google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS244US244&q=site%3Ahtt p%3A%2F%2Forlyrealty.com%2F should 301 to the appropraite new url.

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John Allen
Realtor®/Broker
Allen Real Estate Services, Inc.
Sarasota, Florida
Representing buyers and sellers of fine Sarasota real estate.

John is absolutely correct. Make this one of your top priorities.

Great research John!

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Troy Steuwer
Office Manager / Webmaster

Panama City Beach Real Estate | Panama City Beach Condos For Sale | Panama City Beach Homes For Sale

Thanks John!

I didn't think about the redirects -you saved my butt. The client has a good Google pr, I wouldn't want to mess it up.

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Coming Soon:Orlyrealty.com
Already there: puffergroup.com

I think you have to go back to the client regarding the images becuase she will have a hard time ever ranking well with that site. you can show her my post and make me the bad guy. Explain to her that Google doesn't really know what her site is about. I would focus on the part of the site that says, "proudly serving tenafly, closter, demarest..." and change it from a graphic image to plain text. I would also add the words "real estate" or "homes" in a plain text sentence at the top of the page.

Just tell her the best way to think about it is this. Graphics may look better than plain text but a computer can't read an image so the search engines have no way of knowing what the site is about unless you have plain text on the page with those main keywords.

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Michael Reilly, Owner/Broker
Great Austin Properties, LLC
Austin Texas Real Estate Brokerage

Austin Homes for Sale | Bee Cave Homes For Sale | Spanish Oaks Austin

The issues with the images was discussed during the site's development. I tried to include the keywords through the meta, h1 tag and blog description which are visible in the html but not to the viewer.

In any case, before the redesign, the old site wasn't really optimized at all and still ranked well. I was asked to come up with something more user-friendly to turn traffic into leads which wasn't happening before.

I agree with you though on your point.

Thanks

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Coming Soon:Orlyrealty.com
Already there: puffergroup.com